Personally only see fire-mages and assassination rogues in my raids, seemingly pigeonholed, been that way for a few patches aswell. If the other specs have been buffed maybe they're playing the wrong one though.

The fel flame change was more about kicking demo in the nuts for using FF > shadowbolt with AD and going super mobile though ironically destro just took it in the pooper harder still. After seeing what people who tried destro did in our 2x 25m's up through paragons the last 3 nights I'm comfortable saying these buffs are still not even close to enough. We are talking a 20% negative gap on a neutral fight, more than 20% back on a fight playing to aff/demo, and probably 15% back on a fight playing to the havoc/shadowburn destro niche. These buffs don't come anywhere close to that. The people testing these had PTR experience, 545+ilvl, etc...

The fel flame thing was heavy handed and unnecessary. Once you got a 4pc as demo you'd use shadowbolt. The changes to destro recently just put incinerate comfortably in the lead again. Aff wants MG much more than FF anyhow. There was really no reason to do it. Demo just will lifetap more, aff doesn't care, and destro is just screwed lol so all they did was hurt the weakest spec the most.

The fel flame change was more about kicking demo in the nuts for using FF > shadowbolt with AD and going super mobile though ironically destro just took it in the pooper harder still. After seeing what people who tried destro did in our 2x 25m's up through paragons the last 3 nights I'm comfortable saying these buffs are still not even close to enough. We are talking a 20% negative gap on a neutral fight, more than 20% back on a fight playing to aff/demo, and probably 15% back on a fight playing to the havoc/shadowburn destro niche. These buffs don't come anywhere close to that. The people testing these had PTR experience, 545+ilvl, etc...

The fel flame thing was heavy handed and unnecessary. Once you got a 4pc as demo you'd use shadowbolt. The changes to destro recently just put incinerate comfortably in the lead again. Aff wants MG much more than FF anyhow. There was really no reason to do it. Demo just will lifetap more, aff doesn't care, and destro is just screwed lol so all they did was hurt the weakest spec the most.

Pretty much this. You only lifetap out of meta as demo anyway, so it doesn't really change a whole lot. Destro is still probably going to be far from fine even on its niche. Galakras I seemed to do alright on as Destro, but other than that it's not really spectacular by any means.

Destro is far from fine unless they revert the Fel Flame mana cost, which I see no reason not with the Incinerate ember and damage buffs.

What do you base this upon? Destruction is far from at the bottom of meters, at least it has potential to be. It depends a lot on the tactics your guild runs with, because that spec is the one that suffers the most from bad synergy between DPSers (as in other classes sniping your shadowburns, extended time on situations that are awkward for destruction). If you run in a 10m guild and you basically have monopoly on executes, Destruction is like the holy grail of warlock specs.

So Blizzard says they want CB to be fewer and farther between, and then they give us some RNG that has a CHANCE at producing more CBs? I just don't understand their design plan for destro anymore lol. I imagine this will help AoE sustainability. Personally in regard to the fel flame filler schtick, I don't see what the big deal is. It was hardly breaking the meters, so just let it be I say. It would've allowed a different playstyle for at least a single tier.

Those who you know as Warlocks are your Salvation through Destruction. You exist because we allow it, and you will end because we demand it.

Personally in regard to the fel flame filler schtick, I don't see what the big deal is. It was hardly breaking the meters, so just let it be I say. It would've allowed a different playstyle for at least a single tier.

They did the same back in Cata when some people were using Drain Life as filler for Aff. Thing is, it makes it easier to balance when everyone's basically playing the spec the same way, not using different fillers.

Easier to balance != balanced and destro was nowhere close in any situation. Also sniping 20% adds isn't a spec. Its a way a gimp spec can look a little better on the meters. If you can't kill a paragon before another wave/mechanic or garrosh gets another weapon/phase off its bad news no matter what you did to low HP adds that would likely die from cleave anyhow. (standing next to a target getting HoG'd, warriors period, etc)

If they don't want FF as a filler they already fixed destro so it wouldn't want to. All this change does is make FF a trap that oom's destro in about 5 casts and makes void ray so terrible you could/should delete it from your spellbook if possible. Is there possibly another spell that does so little for so much? Are there ever enough targets in a line that it could even balance to its cost (esp since it no longer refreshes). I mean...clearly the devs didn't think that out. They just kneejerked and wen't "zomg locks are using a movement spell on movement lets break that" with no thought whatsoever to the consequences beyond discouraging that one thing. That ironically they didn't stop the biggest offender (demo) at all. They just pissed off the raid healers and crapped on destro some more.

What is the haste amount that you need to hit the GCD during hero on incinerate? When I play destro with my current affliction build (9800 haste > m > h > c) it just feels so much better than m>c>h. It just feels like I am generating a lot more embers and with my two trinkets (currently wush and toxic totem) it feels like every time I fire a chaos bolt I have something up. Shrug, I don't have any numbers or anything to back up what I am saying since I raided affliction, it was all just feels.

Ignoring all other haste multipliers, 1090 is all it takes to hit the GCD on Incinerate with Backdraft charges. Without Backdraft, you'd need 19772 haste.

Now, I have no numbers to back up what I'll say so take this with a grain of salt, but what if instead of using backdraft charges for incinerate you instead used them for chaos bolt, thus increasing the value of haste? I am not sure what kind of damage loss there would be for making a change like this, but maybe if this was done you could get more haste and with faster casting incinerates you'd generate more embers for fast chaos bolts? Like I said, no numbers or anything to back this up, just a thought.

Now, I have no numbers to back up what I'll say so take this with a grain of salt, but what if instead of using backdraft charges for incinerate you instead used them for chaos bolt, thus increasing the value of haste? I am not sure what kind of damage loss there would be for making a change like this, but maybe if this was done you could get more haste and with faster casting incinerates you'd generate more embers for fast chaos bolts? Like I said, no numbers or anything to back this up, just a thought.

Not worth it. At all.

Only exception is if using Backdraft to CBolt lets you cast a Chaos Bolt when you otherwise wouldn't have been able to, and would cap embers in the meantime, or if it lets you get a freakishly powerful Chaos Bolt that you wouldn't have otherwise been able to cast.

Only exception is if using Backdraft to CBolt lets you cast a Chaos Bolt when you otherwise wouldn't have been able to, and would cap embers in the meantime, or if it lets you get a freakishly powerful Chaos Bolt that you wouldn't have otherwise been able to cast.

Also, what do you think about sacrifice with the buffs to incinerate and bolt? I find myself on most fights able to cast a bolt frequently and with the change it should be even more. I haven't done numbers, so I can't be certain if it'd be worth it yet.

Also, what do you think about sacrifice with the buffs to incinerate and bolt? I find myself on most fights able to cast a bolt frequently and with the change it should be even more. I haven't done numbers, so I can't be certain if it'd be worth it yet.

I wouldn't say that it makes it significantly better than the other two.

Go look at hurricane for the past two expansions. Highest spell cost in game, absolutely horrible damage, pretty much on par with holy nova when it's going full buffed with eclipse and what not. Blizzard is perfectly fine with destroying a single spell into spellbook filler and then attempt to nerf other things to force you to use it.

The destro changes are not surprising nor unexpected knee jerk reactions we knew Blizzard was going to have when 5.4 went live. It wasn't like these were things that they weren't warned about for months on the PTR either. All that has been learned is that if we want to get something done on the ptr we have to throw the same level of fits as we did with KJC in June, and then multiply it by 2 or 3 so that way things get fixed the right way, and not in a stupid way. Apparently as much as the CMs tell us that whining and throwing childish temper tantrums doesn't fix or influence decisions, apparently it does, because it's either doing that or waiting for a bad list of changes going live and breaking a spec and causing way too many issues for a class that was perfectly fine before that, apart from top end raids abusing Demonic Gateways like a dead horse and stupid trinkets with stupid glyphs causing stupid numbers that were created exploiting stupid mechanics.

I'm hoping that whoever gave the final ruling on the warlock changes before 5.4 went live gets slapped upside the head and is set on a time out over at hearthstone or titan, where they have a near negligible chance of screwing stuff up.